NASA has approved an extended mission for the Mars Exploration Rovers, handing them up to five months of overtime assignments, as they finish their three-month prime mission.

The first of the two, Spirit, met the success criteria set for its prime mission. Spirit exceeded 600 meters (1,969 feet) of total drive distance and completed 90 martian operational days after landing.

Opportunity landed three weeks after Spirit. It will complete the two-rover checklist of required feats, when it finishes a 90th martian day of operations April 26. Each martian day, or "sol," lasts about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day.

The mission extension provides $15 million for operating the rovers through September. The extension more than doubles exploration for less than a two percent additional investment, if the rovers remain in working condition. The extended mission has seven new goals for extending the science and engineering accomplishments of the prime mission.

Beyond the quantifiable criteria, such as using all research tools at both landing sites and investigating at least eight locations, the rovers have returned remarkable science results. The most dramatic have been Opportunity's findings of evidence of a shallow body of salty water in the past in the Mars Meridiani Planum region.

Reaching "Columbia Hills," which could hold geological clues to that water story, is one of seven objectives for the extended mission. Opportunity has a parallel one, to seek geologic context for the outcrop in the "Eagle" crater by reaching other outcrops in the "Endurance" crater and perhaps elsewhere. Other science objectives are to continue atmospheric studies at both sites to encompass more of Mars' seasonal cycle and to calibrate and validate data from Mars orbiters for additional types of rocks and soils examined on the ground.

Three new engineering objectives are to traverse more than a kilometer (0.62 mile) to demonstrate mobility technologies; to characterize solar-array performance over long durations of dust deposition at both landing sites; and to demonstrate long-term operation of two mobile science robots on a distant planet. During the past two weeks, rover teams at JPL have switched from Mars-clock schedules to Earth-clock schedules designed to be less stressful and more sustainable over a longer period.

Representatives of Intel Corporation announced the company will begin eliminating approximately 95 percent of the lead used in its processors and chipsets starting later this year. The company is taking these significant steps to remove lead from its product packaging in order to make it more environmentally friendly.

Intel will begin shipping the lead-free technology with select microprocessors and chipsets in Q3, 2004, and embedded IA processors in Q2, 2004. The company shipped its first lead-free memory chips last year. Additional products will be transitioned as manufacturers become able to handle them. The new packages use lead-free solder balls, about the size of salt crystals, and represent the majority of lead used in Intel microprocessor packaging. Intel is working with the industry to find a reliable solution for the tiny amount of lead still needed inside the processor packaging to connect the actual silicon "core" to the package.

The transition to lead-free is a massive industry-wide effort with many technological, logistical and economic challenges. Since 2000, Intel has been working with industry consortia and the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) legislation committee to come up with a solution that can be used around the world. To achieve this, the company developed reference procedures on its own research assembly lines to aide customers implement lead-free technology in their manufacturing process.

Lead has been used in electronics for more than one hundred years because of its electrical and mechanical properties. It has been a scientific and technical challenge for industry researchers to develop new materials that meet the performance and reliability requirements for the different ways lead is used in components, products, and assembly processes. At the same time, various national bodies around the world have been working to reduce or eliminate lead and therefore the danger it represents to the environment and general health.

Intel qualified its first lead-free Plastic Ball Grid Array package in 2001 for use with its Flash memory, and shipped its first lead-free product in 2002. The lead/tin solder previously used for connecting this package to the motherboard was replaced with a tin/silver/copper alloy. This work allowed Intel and its customers to gain valuable insight about what was required both technologically and logistically to make the transition to lead-free technology.

Intel's new Flip Chip Ball Grid Array package also uses a tin/silver/copper alloy to connect the chip package to the motherboard. However, until Intel and the industry can certify a replacement that meets performance and reliability requirements, a tiny of amount of lead/tin (about .02 grams) is still used inside the sealed package to attach the silicon core to the package.

Intel used its assembly development lines in Arizona and Oregon, and Malaysia facilities to develop both flip chip packages and printed circuit board assembly (PCA). The new lead-free compatible materials and assembly processes were documented as reference processes for distribution to customers and system manufacturers. This gave customers a reference point to start redesigning their own printed circuit board assembly processes and bring them into alignment with the lead-free solution. Intel will continue to ship processors with the current packaging during the transition period to aid system manufacturers who need time to develop and qualify their lead-free processes and products.

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have developed and tested a unique heart arrhythmia drug that could prevent the sudden death of millions of people with heart failure as well as people with an inherited heart disorder. The drug represents one of the first molecular-based therapies for heart failure and avoids the toxicity of current treatments.

Results of the initial test, published in the April 9 issue of Science, showed that the drug completely prevents sudden death from arrhythmia in mice that have the same heart defect as people with heart failure.

"The drug will be an incredible advance if it works in patients," says Andrew Marks, chairman of physiology and cellular biophysics, director of the Center for Molecular Cardiology at CUMC, and leader of the new study in a statement. "It represents the beginning of an era when drugs will directly fix the molecular defects in heart failure. While our drug is one of the first molecular-based therapies for heart failure and arrhythmias, it won't be the last."

Heart failure is not a heart attack, but a weakening over years of the heart's ability to pump blood. About 50 percent of the 4.6 million patients with heart failure in the United States will die from a type of arrhythmia that produces a fast and erratic beating of the heart. But medications that prevent arrhythmia are so toxic that most have been removed from the market. Other options, such as defibrillators and heart transplants, are highly invasive and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the new study, the experimental drug was tested in mice that had the same molecular defect as people with heart failure and some otherwise healthy people who develop fatal arrhythmias during exercise. The defect causes a tiny channel in heart muscle to leak calcium ions into heart cells. The leak can trigger a fatal arrhythmia at any time in heart failure patients or during exercise in people with an inherited defect in the channel.

The new drug, developed by Marks, prevents arrhythmia and sudden death by patching the leak in the heart's calcium channel and is based on Marks' 15 years of research. Work in Marks' lab elucidated how the channel works to make the heart beat, and in the past few years, his lab has revealed the channel's connection to heart failure and fatal arrhythmia.

The experimental drug also has great potential in preventing the relentless deterioration of the heart during heart failure, because the leak contributes to the decline.

At least 300 Critically Endangered (CR) - as well as at least 237 Endangered (EN) and 267 Vulnerable (VU) - bird, mammal, turtle and amphibian species have no protection in any part of their ranges, according to the most comprehensive peer-reviewed analysis of its kind. The findings appear in the current issue of the journal Nature.

The "global gap analysis" authors state that a major shift in conservation planning is required to avoid large-scale species extinctions over the next few decades. The prevailing strategy for global conservation, forged at the 1992 World Parks Congress, calls for protection for 10 percent of every major biome by the year 2000. But even though more than 10 percent of the Earth's land surface is now protected, the complete lack of protection for many of Earth's most threatened species underscores the "gaps" in the protected area system.

The Center for Applied Biodiversity Science (CABS) at CI led the study, in which 21 scientists representing 15 organizations participated.

But the analysis builds upon the work of thousands of scientists and dozens of institutions. CABS scientists compared a map of over 100,000 protected areas to maps of 11,633 species ranges from four species groups, based on data compiled through the Species Survival Commission of IUCN-The World Conservation Union and BirdLife International. They then identified places where species live without any protection, and analyzed where the highest priority gaps in protection existed. In total, 1,171 threatened bird species, and 4,735 mammal, 5,454 amphibian and 273 freshwater turtle and tortoise species were included.

MAMMALS: Of 4,735 mammal species analyzed for this study, 258 are "gap species," meaning that they have no protection over any part of their ranges. Of those, 149 are threatened. CR mammals currently unprotected include one of the world's rarest fruit bats, the Comoro black flying fox (Pteropus livingstonii), from the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean and the Handley's slender mouse opossum (Marmosa handleyi) from Colombia.

AMPHIBIANS: Of the 5,454 amphibian species analyzed, 913 are gap species. Of those, 411 are threatened. CR amphibians without current protection include several species from the Mantella genus, a group of colorful frogs endemic to Madagascar, such as the harlequin mantella (Mantella cowanii) and the black-eared mantella (Mantella milotympanum).

BIRDS: The world's 1,171 threatened bird species were analyzed, revealing 232 threatened gap species. CR bird species without current protection include the yellow-eared parrot (Ognorhynchus icterotis), which has fewer than 150 known individuals remaining and is found only in the Colombian Andes and the Caerulean Paradise-flycatcher (Eutrichomyias rowleyi), with fewer than 100 individuals known to exist, only on Indonesia's Sangihe Island.

TURTLES AND TORTOISES: Of the 273 turtles and freshwater tortoises mapped, 21 are gap species, 12 of which are threatened. CR gap species include the Roti Island snake-necked turtle (Chelodina mccordi), discovered in 1994 on the little island of Roti, Indonesia, and threatened by over-collection for the international pet trade, and the Burmese star tortoise (Geochelone platynota) from Myanmar, whose population is being devastated by the trade within Asian medicinal, food, and pet markets.

(Article information from BBC Online)

The detection of dark matter may be possible within a decade, a Nobel prize winning physics professor has claimed.

Prof Carlo Rubbia told a conference in Edinburgh, UK, that this breakthrough will change our view of our place in the universe.

Recent estimates suggest about 23% of our universe is made of dark matter.

So far, attempts to prove the existence of dark matter have drawn a blank. Even huge particle accelerators with tunnels several miles in diameter have failed to create dark matter particles artificially.

Professor Rubbia, of the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment (ENEA), told the conference that detectors deep underground may finally provide the proof. Detectors like those at Boulby in Yorkshire are buried deep beneath the Earth to shield them from cosmic radiation that could confuse the equipment.
The leading dark matter candidates are heavy slow-moving particles known as Wimps (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) that have been drifting through space since the Universe began.

These sub-atomic particles interact with normal matter only very weakly and are almost impossible to detect in a laboratory on the Earth's surface.

Rubbia suggests a stream of dark matter might constantly be flowing through the Earth and these may be measurable in the underground detectors.

So far, the existence of dark matter has not been proven beyond doubt. But Rubbia said he is confident that even larger detectors can do the job within the next 10 years.

Rubbia was speaking at the 2004 Institute of Physics Nuclear Physics Conference in Edinburgh, UK.